- XRP’s 24-hour trading volume in South Korea reached $650 million, surpassing Bitcoin’s $282 million.
- This trading boom coincided with bullish sentiments surrounding Ripple’s ongoing legal battle with the SEC.
In recent weeks, Ripple [XRP] has become a formidable player in the cryptocurrency market, especially in South Korea, where it has now surpassed Bitcoin [BTC] as the most traded cryptocurrency.
This shift comes as XRP has been on a bullish ride in recent weeks, rising nearly 40% in the past 14 days and 20% in the past seven days.
This bullish price movement has resulted in the asset crossing the $0.6 mark and trading as high as $0.63 as of July 18.
However, at the time of writing, the asset appeared to be undergoing a price correction, down 6.1% in the last 24 hours, leaving its price at around $0.5485 at the time of writing.
Surpass Bitcoin
Notably, XRP trading volume in South Korea has skyrocketed facts indicating a 24-hour trading volume of $650 million, which is significantly higher than Bitcoin’s $282 million.
Most of this trading activity was concentrated on the Upbit exchange, where XRP volume reached $526.8 million.
This increase reflected not only growing investor interest in XRP, but also its increasing relevance as a major competitor in the region’s crypto market.
Ripple-SEC case plays a role?
The increase in XRP trading volume and price coincided with increased market optimism surrounding Ripple’s ongoing legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
This legal entanglement appears to have piqued investor interest, especially in South Korea, indicating strong confidence in the asset’s future prospects.
In July 2023 XRP reaches a similarly dominant trading position, which correlated with a spike in price following favorable regulatory news from the SEC.
This pattern appears to be repeating itself, with XRP’s current market performance mimicking past trends that have historically led to significant price increases.
How is XRP performing in the overall market?
Not only because XRP is doing well in South Korea, it also seems to be doing well in the overall crypto market.
Santiment, a leading market intelligence platform, has done this before revealed an increase in network activity for XRP.
New and total addresses communicating on the XRP Ledger have reached levels not seen since March, indicating a vibrant and growing network.
This increase in network activity comes with historical comparisons to 2017, where similar patterns preceded the run-up to record XRP prices.
Meanwhile, AMBCrypto recently reported that XRP mimicked a pattern it followed in 2017, which led to the token reaching an all-time high.
Understanding the importance of the Network Value to Transactions (NVT) ratio can provide deeper insights into XRP’s market position.
The NVT ratio, which compares the market value of a crypto network to the number of transactions on that network, is an indicator of the relative utility and value of the asset.


Source: CryptoQuant
Realistic or not, here is the XRP market cap in terms of BTC
XRP has a press time to NVT ratio of approximately 110 suggested that the market may value the network highly, compared to the number of transactions it processes.
This can be interpreted as a bullish signal, especially if the high NVT ratio is supported by growing transaction volumes or increasing usefulness of the XRP Ledger.